Creativity is a shared resource. We are not in a competition over the last drop of creativity because the more creative we are, the more access we have to even more creativity.

Creativity breeds creativity. It sparks more ideas, more energy, more flow by liberating ideas from limitations and connecting people with their dreams. Fully realized, creativity drives a bright and wonderful, endless source of connection.

When you create, you ignite more connections and the beauty, practicality, and pleasure of those connections invite an even greater creative response.

The more creative we are, the more open we are to our own creativity, the more we open other people up to creativity as well. Creativity grows more creativity. It's a great and awesome gift.

I would...

• Spend more time doing improv
• Record dozens of albums in a fabulous studio
• Create a massive exhibit of collage
• Write long involved literary novels and books of poems
  
• Make improvised movies
• Live by an ocean sometimes and sometimes by the mountains
• Never commute to work again

What would you do?

 

 

How many ways can you think of to develop your creativity? It's a useful exercise to create your own list, pulling in all of the ideas that are right there for the taking but that might easilly slip away unless you grab them now.

Here's the start of my list (sure, I'll be adding to it as ideas flash in and around). If you'd like to add to the list, let me know -- I'll be sure to give you credit if the idea is new to the list -- and all yours. Ideas from others are also welcome but please do cite them when they come from another source).

• Give your internal critic a vacation
• Doodle non-stop for an hour
• Look at things upside down
• Randomly circle five words in an upside down magazine and use that for a title for something to create
• Read a magazine about something you know nothing about
• Work your way thru "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. (If you haven't done this yet, start there!)
• Read "Writing Down The Bones" (or anything else) by Natalie Goldberg
• Explore lateral thinking (books, wikipedia, or De Bono)
  
• Buy a new box of crayons and an artist's sketch pad
• Play a word association game
• Race yourself to write one page
• List 10 questions you could ask a stranger that would tell you more about them then most of their friends know.
• List 10 probing questions and answer them yourself. Find someone else to ask you those questions. Write about what you discovered
• Play a musical instrument you've never played before
• Organize a special occasion drum circle
• Find a musical instrument you're interested in mastering and get started (or continue if you are already on the way)
• Visit an art museum
• Attend a cultural festival for a culture that is not your own
• Write a letter to your mom if she's still around, or someone else's mom or someone else in your family
• Build something for your dad or someone else in your family
• Imagine your dream car. Draw it.
• Imagine your dream self. Draw it.
• Swim naked (someplace you can go undetected of course)
• Tear a five dollar bill in half
• Spend a morning cutting out pictures of your favorite things and amke a collage
• Write one page with your non-dominant hand
• Keep your computer turned off for 24 hours. One week later keep it turned off for 48 hours (you can stop there, but an occasional computer-fast is worth considering to boost your creativity)
• Wrap a present using something other than commercial wrapping paper (my friend Len once used the comics from the Sunday paper)
• Hand-make a thank-you card and send it to someone you should be grateful for. If there's someone you've said "I appreciate it" to but done nothing else, send the card to show you mean it
• Buy a hat you've never had the courage to wear before and find a place to wear it
• Take a dance class
• Attend a church you've never been to before
• Spend an hour looking at the world as if you were four years old
• Take an improv class (for example, here)
• Help out with a community theatre group
• Teach Sunday School (the learners' materials include wonderfully creative ideas -- you'll grow as you help the student to learn)
• Watch the movie "Big" starring Tom Hanks. He captures the childlike vision and perception that is bound to trigger greate waves of creativity in you
• Write down your dreams as soon as you wake up
• Stop at a mountain scenic overlook and gaze
• Focus on some creative affirmations
• Buy an original painting and hang it in an important place
• Watch a TV show with a friend. Turn off the sound. Improvise the dialogue
• Invite a friend to play chess with the intention of collaborating on new rules. Try a few until you find one or tow that create a viable game variation
• Get a package of index cards and draw pictures on several of them until you draw something interesting. Make it into a postcard and send it to a friend. Repeat.
• Find some very serious looking pictures in a magazine and draw mustaches on the faces. Draw many different kinds of mustaches -- and nothing else. Display the picture for a few days
• Think about some bumper sticker that you have seen. Now draw your own "bumper sticker" on a piece of paper. The slogan you select should be uplifting, positive, and on the theme of creativity. Repeat until you achieve a slogan that will make a great bumper sticker. If you like, you then create a real bumper sticker at cafepress.com
• Check out these resources on creativity
  
• Create your own list of how to develop your creativity!

Also posted at:
http://www.xanga.com/dougsmithtraining

and
http://www.developingcreativity.com/how_to_develop_your_creativity.html

It is true that hard work leads to eventual results.  It is also (sometimes) true that hard work provides its own rewards. Discipline will help you, guide you, and propel you forward through and beyond any degree of getting stuck; past any obstacles. Plod your way forever thru.

And, it is also true that the muse may respond well to all that hard work and yet may also elude you. The must may not be in a hardworking kind of mood.

Plod on if you must, and also consider playing. The muse is a playful partner who sometimes responds more quickly to tom-foolery than nose-to-the-grindstone effort. Sometimes joyful jumping around to game like innocent exploratory play is the break that you, and your muse, require.

Let your muse come out to play -- and play right back.

Play without a  goal. Play without a destination. Play without a project to ground you. Simply play. The muse likes to play around.

Are you ready to play?

How are things connected? When you are searching for a creative spark or hungry for innovation, think about your own creative center, that place where you feel totally connected and completely alive.  It's that place that in your finest moments you know that not only is it great to be alive: you are one of the reasons that it is -- for yourself, and for other people, too. Find how that creative center is connected to what's around you, what's away from you , and what's within you. By making connections you energize that  creative impulse and that increases your creativity -- and that, of course, changes everything. Speaking of connections... Alamy -- Here's a site with many fine images that are useful for writer's prompts (what does the image spark inside you? What feelings does in invoke? What story does it reveal?) inspiration, and creative appreciation. That's What She Said -- I'm in the training business, and that provides some interesting connections. Do you think you can learn from a TV show? Well, this blog is all about HR issues in connection with the show "The Office". As any HR professional would tell you, if that office were real it would be a litigation festival -- but it's a creative exercise in humor and just real enough to be funny, but not so real that you'd take it seriously.

Are you ever discouraged in your creative pursuits? That's natural. Sometimes, the more creative you are about to become the more obstacles appear that stand in your way. They are not the end of the creative road. They are not unbreakable. They are the natural resistance that emerges as creativity stirs the waves.

Ride the waves. Push ahead. Keep on creating.

Your masterpiece is ready for you to keep moving

I'm still improvising the whole emerging Improvarama scene. I plan to involve others thru a series of workshops and build new kinds of improv, especially in the long form. I also plan to use Improvarama as a place where we can create and share improvisational music.

I recently saw a great performance at the IO West in Hollywood:

Visiting IO West

Have you explored how much you can learn from improv? The more that I explore drama, improv, music, and the arts the more opportunity I find for learning and applying that learning across my other fields of play.

This week I was in Orange County doing some training and it provided the perfect opportunity to see one of the great active improv venues in the world, IO West (formerly known as Improv Olympic West) on Hollywood Boulevard. An outgrowth of the IO Theater in Chicago that was founded by Charna Halpern and fueled by the late Del Close (a Chicago legend an "inventor" of the now classic long form improv technique The Harold) The I O West sits right on Hollywood Boulevard and acts like a magnet for some truly great talent. It's a fun place to visit and you can feel the excitement and enthusiasm for improv the moment you walk in the door.

One of the participants in the class that I was facilitating, John Bowers, mentioned that "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" was his favorite TV show so naturally I invited him to come along. The IO focus on improv is entirely different than "Whose Line..." yet both have great value, both are great fun, and both are worth catching.

After a stop and go rush hour trip thru Los Angeles to Hollywood we grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Pizza-by-the-slice nearby and eased into IO for some free thirty minute shows. My expectations were mixed, based on the DVD that is included in Halpern's great little book "Art By Committee, A Guide To Advanced Improvisation". While the DVD is a treasure because available recordings of The Harold are rare, it is also a difficult transfer from live theatre to TV. Once in the tiny theatre, though, the improv takes on a new diminesion and fills the space with magic.

The improv groups that we saw were young, enthusiastic, and talented. What fun to see thirty minutes of surprise connections develop out of one audience suggestions (some of the one word suggestions that lead to the main themes that night included "pizza", "college", and "movies". There were also extensive riffs on Kris Kristofferson and class reunions). The groups we saw included TrophyWife, Squadron, 86 Olympics, and King Ten. With another class in the morning we decided to leave before Mission Improvable took the stage.

The crowd starts out small and gathers size as the night goes on. Many in the audience are other actors and avid improv enthusiasts, so the crowd is super friendly and supportive. The groups fed off of that support and offered brilliant pieces that tied together in unexpected and humorous ways.

The quality of the Harolds (essentially a series of three short scenes and occasionally monologues that feature the characters over the course of different time periods) was outstanding with only an occasional obvious joke or scatalogically cheap line. The actors did an excellent job of "accepting all offers" (taking the ideas offered by other actors and building on them) and stretching each other's energy to the maximum level of interest and delight. You could spot the one actor who seemed to be new to the technique because he was what Paul Sills would call "too much in his own head" trying too hard to invent things when other offers were out there to build on, but the more experienced actors skillfully adjusted, adapted, offered, and built on the combined ideas creating wonderful, unique, entertaining half hour masterpieces.

That's part of the thrill for me, knowing that what you are watching is brand new, has never before been seen, and is a type of high wire act of the soul for these actors. While you can't fall far off the stage, you could certainly fall on your face. These groups, on this night, were flying.

I even saw an improv techniqe I'd never seen before. During one scene an actor appeared from offstage, waved his arms, and said "Poof! You're wearing top hats and tails!" to the two actors on stage, who promptly used that idea and played it into a major theme for the rest of the piece. One actor even adopted top-hat-maker as his occupation and purpose for being on stage and did a wonderful flowing physical take on assembling a row of large top hats. It was his shining moment and a crowd pleaser.

One actress offered a marvelous radio segment using a distinctive voice and pace that was fascinating. When given the "stretch" sign by another actor, she riffed on messages of women's rights and the stuggle for equality and choice. It was a funny dynamic. She also recalled an odd reference to a certain part of a woman's anatopmy that was refered to earlier at "23" by saying "My 23 is on fire...I need some ointment". It might sound incredible, but she actually did that tastefully.

That Harold evolved into a flashback scene told thru a dance that became a filmstrip presentation for the "grandchildren" and connected plot lines that seemed previously unresolvable. The actors made it look both effortless and fun. A studied playwright couldn't have written a better ending with four weeks of reflection and work.

The site lines in the small box theater can be strained, especially if you're not tall, but the closeness of the talent and the shared joy of the art make for a fun and fascinating evening.

So what did I learn?

• Improv's focus on the ensemble is the perfect team model: whether or not you are an individual star, the rest of the team can pull together something to be truly proud of.

• Music is one of the toughest parts of improv to deliver and it takes a distinctive and disciplined talent to pull out the right notes at the right tmes. This is a skill that I expect to work more on to be able to combine the immediacy of relevant musical "soundtracking" and an occasional spontaneous song to match or enhance the mood. Done correctly, the music becomes the unseen player.

• Leave your "internal judge" behind and a night of theater is even more fun. Might this not apply to other endeavors as well? When I stopped wondering "how good are they" and started simply following their artistic offers, it felt like being a child again watching a new form of entertainment for the first time.

                         
Learning Reflections

Who has rescued you when you've been "too much in your own head"? How did they do it? How did you respond? How can you help rescue others as well?

How do you practice to be spontaneous? How can your pull yourself away from cliche's and toward innovation?

Improv, while spontaneous, requires a certain depth of knowledge about many different topics. What are learning that you hadn't focused on a year ago? What are you doing to increase your personal growth and knowledge?
   



Connections

More about "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" at Wikipedia.

For a full description on how The Harold works I recommend reading Truth In Comedy .

There are several other great books on improv available.

I recently watched "The Secret" online. They've got a deal that allows you to view the full movie one time for $4.95, and you can apply that as a discount if you decide to purchase the DVD. I did.

I am an enthusiastic fan of "What The Bleep Do We Know?" and one of these days I'll finish writing my "review" of it for The Movie College.  I think that I haven't finished my article on that film because it exists on so many levels, not just of film making but also on science (some would say pseuoscience), philosophy, theology, art, and personal growth. And that just scratches the surface. But what led me to "The Secret"  was an endorsement for it from a writer in the What The Bleep newsletter. After framing an expected level of skepticism, she confessed to being captivated by it.

Minor Spoiler Included Below

The trailer for "The Secret" pulled me in (although frankly, it poses itself as more of a story than it really is. Don't expect any real intrigue on the level of "The DaVinci Code" because this movie is mostly interviews and entertaining lectures). The Secret is revealed quite early in the film (here's your last chance to avoid learning that now) and although it might be strong to say it was disappointing, it really isn't much of a secret. It's been known for a long time and publicized in various forms all over the web. There are consultants who propurt to work using this "secret" and books that have been written to teach you how to use this secret. What is it? The secret is the law of attraction.

Depending on where you sit with philosophy and physics, you may or may not find this funny or fascinating. The odd thing about the way the theory of attraction (see, I'm already backing off from calling it a law -- it's not that I disagree, I just don't know yet) is that if you believe it you are likely to see evidence of confirming itand -- if you do not believe it you will certainly find and create evidence that you are right and that the theory is bogus. The theory of attraction says that we attract to us everything that happens in our lives.

Whatever is going on in your life right now, you brought it there, whether it was consiously or not -- you attracted it. You can, therefore, make more effective choices about what you attract. You can achieve anything that you can imagine, provided that you are singular in your focus and truly believe. While that sounds a little bit like a Tinker Bell approach to life, who's to say that Peter Pan wasn't one of the many illustrations of the law/theory in action. I can think of many more, but it again depends on what reality you are creating in this moment whether or not you find the comparisons apt. "Alice In Wonderland" perhaps, is an example.

I expect to expand on these thoughts at some point at The Movie College but for now, here are the applications of "The Secret" in the lines of improv and creativity:

• You can make your improvs more convincing: create that reality, rather than just think you are pretending it. Make "method" acting seem tame by comparison. Step out there and attract real drama on your stage
• Improv does not need to be silly.  Attract the talent and seriousness of a well-written work. Create magic and art on the spot.
• You can attract audiences who will love and appreciate your work. (a gift for every artist!(
• It's all made up anyway, so make up a quality existance of sharing, caring, and baring truth.

If you can suspend your disbelief for long enough to be entertained, you will find "The Secret" to be though-provoking and maybe even inspirational, so by all means give it a try. And you might even say yes and build on its deep thoughts.